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Friday, April 25, 2014

On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage, a 25 year old railroad construction foreman, was directing a work gang blasting rock outside Cavendish, Vermont. While Gage was compacting the explosive charge using a tamping iron, the blasting powder exploded prematurely and sent the tamping iron completely through the left prefrontal cortex of his brain. Surprisingly, Gage survived the accident (and lived another twelve years), but even more surprisingly Gage’s personality changed completely. Before the accident Gage was a quite, patient, respectful, well-liked, hardworking, responsible, and highly self-controlled person; after the accident Gage was the complete opposite. Due to the brain damage Gage suffered, he’d lost his ability to control his thoughts, feelings, and actions. This case is frequently cited in the curricula and academic papers of neuroscience and psychology which has led to our current understanding of how the brain works.

The human brain has the largest frontal lobe of any in the animal kingdom. Our ability to think and reason and make logical choices makes us god-like among all the other animals. And quite frankly, our intelligence puts us atop the food chain and makes us by far the most dangerous animal on the planet.

Why do most people prefer dogs over cats as pets? Well dogs have a large frontal brain lobe too and this allows them to learn and be trained. Cats, on the other hand, have quite small frontal brain lobes and are very difficult to train. In fact, cats are very instinctual animals; that is, they're hard-wired to behave in certain ways.

Phineas Gage lived another twelve years after the accident and was eventually able to relearn many of the good character traits he had before the accident. We too are not locked into certain behavior patterns and can relearn the good character traits we learned as children.

Some people believe they're set in their ways and don't want to improve as human beings. Science and the Good Lord both say differently. We're all capable of changing for the better.

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Because we are all tempted to sacrifice our souls for profit, power, position, prestige, privilege, promotions, popularity, pride, prejudice, politics, prosperity, possessions, or pleasures. So by changing our paradigms, we can become the best versions of ourselves and help make our world a better place to live.

In this blog, we highlight bad practices using examples from current and past events, then we show what the better choices are. This is not to show that good always triumphs over evil, but only to show that better exists and that it's possible for people to operate in the better way. The history of business and how we grew to where we are gives us a perspective that things have been just as bad in the past and eventually got better, so there's still hope that things will cycle to the “better” yet again. We believe this blog is part of pushing the rope of improvement up the hill of progress. If you are dissatisfied with the status quo and looking for a better way to live and work, then bookmark our blog and follow us by email.

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BRYAN J. NEVA, SR. is a writer and electronics engineer from San Diego, California. He served as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy during the Cold War and early War on Terror. He subsequently earned a BSEE and MBA degree from Old Dominion University, and then went on to work in the defense, medical device, and aerospace industries. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Bryan is a strong proponent of Catholic Social Justice and Economic teachings akin to conscientious capitalism and responsible, servant leadership. From his diverse background, he has a counterintuitive view of business management that values people over profits and the needs of the many over the wants of the few.

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ALLEN F. LAUDENSLAGER, JR. is a semi-retired writer from Seattle with a business and management background spanning over fifty years. After serving in the Army in Vietnam, he went on to work as an assembly line worker, a foreman, an electrician, a cabinetmaker, a small business owner, an electronics technician, a supervisor, a manager, a senior project manager, and a technical writer. With the knowledge and experience he has gained over a lifetime, he brings an insightful view of life, business, and management in today's global markets.